Episode 143
Table of Contents:
In this episode:
Welcome back!
In today's episode, Dr. Sydney provides a comprehensive look at how dietary changes, gut health, and emotional wellbeing play critical roles in managing autoimmune conditions.
From discussing the benefits of acupuncture and moxibustion in treating dermatological issues to the connection between stress management and autoimmune disease, this episode serves as an educational resource for anyone interested in integrative approaches to health.
In today's episode, Dr. Sydney provides a comprehensive look at how dietary changes, gut health, and emotional wellbeing play critical roles in managing autoimmune conditions.
From discussing the benefits of acupuncture and moxibustion in treating dermatological issues to the connection between stress management and autoimmune disease, this episode serves as an educational resource for anyone interested in integrative approaches to health.
Dr. Sydney's Personal Story with Autoimmunity
- Sydney was diagnosed with psoriasis at the age of seven and struggled with managing the condition throughout her life.
- In college, she experienced a severe flare-up, which led her to explore alternative treatments.
- A naturopath helped her identify a connection between her diet and psoriasis symptoms, resulting in a 50% reduction in symptoms after eliminating major allergens.
Psoriasis and Gut Health
- Sydney's conversation with a naturopath was the first time her digestion was considered a contributing factor to her psoriasis.
- An elimination diet revealed a significant link between certain foods, particularly gluten, and the worsening of her skin condition.
Exploring Chinese Medicine
- Sydney decided to pursue Chinese medicine due to its comprehensive and systematic approach to health.
- A personal encounter with acupuncture and the positive results it brought to her psoriasis guided Sydney's career path.
- Chinese medicine encompasses various treatments beyond acupuncture, including moxibustion and herbal medicine, which Sydney found highly effective in treating autoimmunity and skin ailments.
Chinese Medicine Theories on Autoimmunity
- Yin Fire Theory: Describes the displacement of metabolic fire in the body, leading to autoimmune symptoms.
- Sydney explains that Chinese medicine perceives pain and symptoms as the body's attempt to stabilize itself.
Lifestyle Changes and Patient Empowerment
- Sydney stresses the importance of patients understanding their own condition better than any healthcare provider.
- Empowering patients to take charge of their health by recognizing good habits, identifying harmful behaviors, and acknowledging what may be missing in their lifestyle is key to recovery.
Take Action
- Assess and document what you're currently doing in terms of your health.
- List actions or habits that are beneficial (good), detrimental (bad), and elements that may be lacking (missing) in your lifestyle.
Other Resources:
Connect with Sydney Malawer
Watch this interview:
Episode Transcript
Sydney Malawer:[Page//00:00:00] because one of the things about psoriatics is we have a personality type where the way I describe it is we turn our, um, hobbies into obligations. And so we tend to be hyper, hyper stressed out people and acupuncture minimally, even if it's needles in the wrong place, will calm down the nervous system and allow for psoriatics to like, not get so overwhelmed.
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Julie Michelson: Welcome back to the [Page//00:01:00] inspired living with autoimmunity podcast. I'm your host, Julie Michelson. And today we are joined by Dr. Sidney Mallower, who runs the Tendervine Health, an acupuncture and integrative East Asian medicine practice in Berkeley, California, specializing in the treatment of complex conditions, in particular autoimmunity and dermatology.
Julie Michelson: Dr. Sidney's training is focused in traditional Japanese acupuncture and moxibustion, classical herbalism, and clinical integrative East Asian medicine. In today's conversation, we are demystifying autoimmunity from the Chinese medicine perspective, and Dr. Sidney explains how approaches like moxibustion can be autoimmune game changers.
Julie Michelson: Sydney, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Julie. It's great to be here. I am so excited for our conversation today, and I would love to start by having you share some of your own journey with listeners. Um, because I know [Page//00:02:00] you have a story that's going to make people lean in.
Sydney Malawer: So, yeah, so, um, I have autoimmunity.
Sydney Malawer: I've had it since I was seven. So I have a psoriasis. So, as a lot of people know, autoimmunity tends to come in threes. Um, so, my first one was psoriasis, which I had when I was seven. Um, which is very rare for psoriasis, because usually psoriasis happens after puberty, not before. So, that means it's a very, like, hard to treat psoriasis.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and so, I just remember, like, itching my whole life. And, I grew up with that, and I went to doctors, and they gave me steroid creams, and, you know. Then I was in college, um, and it got really bad. So my junior year of college, it was on 75 percent of my body. Uh, and I went to school in upstate New York, where it's bitter, bitter cold, and my psoriasis is always worse in the winter.
Sydney Malawer: And then I, um, [Page//00:03:00] I was just like at my wits end, and I went to the doctor, and they're like, well, it's, the only option for you is a biologic. Which, I was 20. And they effectively were like, Yeah, one of the big risks is, um, Like, leukemia lymphoma. Because it cuts off the inflammation process, Which includes tumor necrosis factor.
Sydney Malawer: Which is what actually kills tumors. So, I was at my wit's end. I'm like, I'm 20 years old. Um, and I respect people who want to go down that route. Just for me, I needed other options. I was like, this can't be the only option. And so my dad had suggested I actually go see a naturopath. And I was like, okay, I didn't know what it was, right?
Sydney Malawer: I'm from New York, we didn't know what naturopaths were. Um, so I went to a naturopath and within that conversation they're like, I think it had something to do with your gut, like what you're eating. So let's do an elimination, um, and then check back in three weeks. So she gave me like a really great protocol for an elimination where we took out the seven major allergens, [Page//00:04:00] um, and then a plan for reintroducing them.
Sydney Malawer: And in the three weeks I was off, my psoriasis reduced by 50%.
Julie Michelson: Which not so I'd love to be pretend I'm surprised,
Sydney Malawer: but it was mind blowing for me because I was like in this conversation with the naturopath initially, she was like, um, She asked about my digestion, which my dermatologist had never asked about my digestion, and I had awful digestion my whole life.
Sydney Malawer: I remember I always had tummy aches, um, but I was at the point where I, you know, it was my junior year of school, a lot of pressure, and I remember it felt like I was passing gravel in my intestines. Oh. And I just thought, Like, I'm Jewish. Jews tend to have poor digestion, right? We're a little sensitive.
Sydney Malawer: We're a little sensitive, so I was like, I have Jewish tummy. Like, this is no big deal. This is just what I'm, I was just doled out with. I'm diagnosing
Julie Michelson: you with Jewish tummy. That is awesome. Yeah, pretty much. But also, kind of [Page//00:05:00] the story I had in my head my whole life. Yeah.
Sydney Malawer: I was just like, I have Jewish tummy, right?
Sydney Malawer: Um, and it's funny because as I learned further on, Ashkenazi Jews have a, four times more likelihood for inflammatory bowel disease than anyone else. So that, so just tell me is real, but right.
Julie Michelson: But it's, um,
Sydney Malawer: yeah, but it was a thing. So I was like, and I had never put the two and two together with the deterioration of my skin and the deterioration of my digestion.
Sydney Malawer: And so in those three weeks, I felt great. I had more energy. I didn't feel like I was passing gravel. And then when I started reintroductions, when I reintroduced gluten, particularly wheat, she didn't say gluten at the time because this is 08, where gluten wasn't exactly a thing. But when I reintroduced wheat, I got all that back again.
Sydney Malawer: And my psoriasis started getting bad again. So I took it out and I've been gluten free ever since. And it's so funny because people ask if I miss it. And I'm like, no, because I know how painful it was when I was on it. Yeah. Um, [Page//00:06:00] so, but it was miraculous. So in that, that, you know, in those three weeks, it went down by 50%, and then my digestion got better, and then over time, it went away.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and since 2008, so that was how many years ago, 16 years ago? Um, I've had three major flares, when before, I was consistently flared since I was 8 years old. And the three flares coincided with major emotional events in my life. And so, Um, that started really getting my, my wheels turning where I was like, Oh, the system is more like skin ailments are not just skin deep.
Sydney Malawer: Right, right. And I started like really going for more alternative methods because Western medicine in my case did not meet my needs. Right. And so I started going down this path for my own health, right? I worked in something completely different for 10 years. I worked in, um, social enterprise. So I helped build social, socially minded startups for [Page//00:07:00] 10 years.
Sydney Malawer: And then, um, I remember I was 29 and I was like, Oh my God, I'm turning 30 next year. What do I actually want to be? What do I want? Who do I want to be? Yeah. Legit. I was like, Oh, cause my entire twenties was doing things that people told me I'd be good at. Right. So that's why I worked in social startups. I was really, really good in like understanding and reading people.
Sydney Malawer: I'm really good at like responding on the fly and like building things from scratch. And so that's why I did that because people told me I'd be good at it. And then when I was turning 29, I was like, Oh, I, I don't know if I want to do this the rest of my life, right? I don't know if I want to work in some startups.
Sydney Malawer: I'm like burnt out and I'm working for other people. And I'm a, I was an impossible person to manage. God bless all my managers in the past. No, really. The only reason they kept me on is because they needed me because I was so productive.
Julie Michelson: Right. But,
Sydney Malawer: um, But yeah, so I was like, okay, what do I actually want to be when I grew up?
Sydney Malawer: And I did a whole analysis for myself [Page//00:08:00] and I realized I wanted to work directly with the beneficiaries of my day to day work. I wanted mentorship. Um, and I wanted more control over what doing what I thought was right. So, meaning, I didn't want a boss telling me what to do, I wanted either to have a boss that let me be subject matter expert and give me autonomy, or be my own boss.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and so, I was like, okay, I know kind of what I want to do, but in what realm? And so I went to my Google search history, and my Google search history is all, you know, What, like, acupressure points for this, and, um, not foods to help with asthma, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And so I was like, okay, there's something here.
Sydney Malawer: And at the time, I hadn't realized it, so I had befriended an acupuncturist. Okay. Because I was living in MedellÃn, Colombia at the time, and so I wound up befriending an acupuncturist who would invite me into treatments and started mentoring me before I consciously knew that's what I [Page//00:09:00] was going to go into.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and then I decided on Chinese medicine in particular because one, acupuncture really, really helped me in those emotional upheavals. I hadn't started the herbal side yet, but eventually when I was in school I did and my psoriasis got significantly better after that, um, from another flare that I had.
Sydney Malawer: And then, um, I, so I was already in it, but I didn't know, like it wasn't conscious in my mind that like I was already being mentored in this medicine. Right, right. And then one of the reasons why I chose that as opposed to like Ayurveda or other types of like, um, medicines that have a whole systems approach, uh, was because in the United States, Uh, especially in California, which is where I was planning on moving, um, acupuncturists are considered primary care providers.
Sydney Malawer: So they're taken more seriously as a bridge between East and West. And so I eventually decided that I, you know, quit my job, took six months off to rest because I was so burnt out, and then went to grad [Page//00:10:00] school. And then I started my practice and I focused my entire practice in autoimmunity and dermatology.
Julie Michelson: I love it. Yeah. And I love the, I want to be careful what rabbit hole, cause I could talk to you for five hours, um, starting up, you know, when nobody wants to hear our conversation about growing up on the East coast as a Jewish girl with Jewish tummy. Yeah. Or why, even though certain people, you know, are like, I don't believe it.
Julie Michelson: You'd never cheat with gluten is exactly what you said. No. Why? I would never do that to myself.
Sydney Malawer: No, it hurts. And the more I learn about celiac, I'm like convinced that I have it.
Julie Michelson: Yep. Um, I just,
Sydney Malawer: but I can't get diagnosed now because I would have to eat gluten.
Julie Michelson: Right. Well, and that's how I, that, that was what happened to me was my son was diagnosed with gluten, gluten diagnosed with celiac when he was 12.
Julie Michelson: I went gluten free to support him, you know, middle school. And I remember it was like right before his Bar Mitzvah, [Page//00:11:00] like, you know, and back then I actually. You know, thought that, that it was so important, you know, such an important part of that age to eat junk food, you know, just kind of funny. Um, and then my rheumatologist was like, Oh, well, I bet you have celiac.
Julie Michelson: I bet that was your first autoimmune and you just don't know it. And same thing. They were like, well, we'll do a biopsy, but you have to start eating gluten. That was as far as I got. I tried, I failed, and I will never do it again.
Sydney Malawer: I, I won't even try. I was, like, literally, look at all of the extra intestinal manifestations of celiac disease.
Sydney Malawer: I even had the dermatitis herpetiformis. Like, I remember it as a kid. I would have these long wheels. Yeah, these long wheels on my arms and legs and that's what dermatitis or pediformis is, right? Yeah, it can show up on the on the um abdomen too, but like [Page//00:12:00] it looked exactly like the pictures and I was like, oh crap Okay.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. And my, my son actually didn't present with any GI issues. It
Sydney Malawer: was extra intestinal.
Julie Michelson: Yup. And luckily, you know, we found out much to the surprise of everybody, cause he had been tested, you know, blood tested back then a million times, um, which nobody ever told me didn't mean anything. Um, and we, he was doing it as a rule out.
Julie Michelson: And they were like, I remember literally when getting the call from the pediatric GI doctor, it was like, 530 at night and I had a chicken pot pie in the oven. Oh no. It's like, wait, what do we do? Cute. Anyway, see, we could go in a million directions. I want, I want to circle back to, um, because I do love, there are not enough practitioners focusing on autoimmune and [Page//00:13:00] dermatology and not a lot of.
Julie Michelson: true healers focusing on dermatology, right? Nobody's asking why, not nobody. Not enough at, you know, connecting gut health and, and all the things I always, you know, nobody has a steroid cream deficiency. Like, that's not really what's going on. What's going on. Um, but I want to dig in a little bit and, and have you teach us.
Julie Michelson: About Chinese medicine. Um, and, and this approach because you're a trained functional medicine provider, but I know from, from chatting and reading, um, that, you know, you don't really Chinese medicine is your approach. And, and yes, you have tools. from being a functional medicine provider, but really, you come at it from a different, a, a, a different perspective.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah. So, um, yeah, this is a, it's a great topic. So, [Page//00:14:00] first I want to address some things. So, it's funny because you say healer. I am not a healer.
Julie Michelson: You're a conduit.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah, it's more like, I don't feel like I'm a healer, and I feel like having that perspective makes it much easier to be more scientific. Right? And, and also, like, when I think about it, um, If anything, I'm twwhatever I give people is 20 percent of the solution.
Sydney Malawer: The other 80 percent is them and their genetics and their habits. Right? And that's true of any medicine.
Julie Michelson: Right. But I'm guessing you're not giving them that 20 percent and sending them out, out the door. Oh, no, no, no, no. I definitely support. Yeah. A
Sydney Malawer: hundred percent. We're a support system for sure. But like sometimes I, cause I've seen it, I've seen people in my profession be like, I'm a healer, but like this person's not getting better.
Sydney Malawer: What am I doing wrong? And I'm like, no, no, no.
Julie Michelson: So
Sydney Malawer: it goes to take a step out and be like, this is their healing journey. I am a helper on that journey. What more can I do to help [Page//00:15:00] them turn a corner? So that's the first thing and it feeds into Chinese medicine. So Chinese medicine is a very sophisticated medical system.
Sydney Malawer: It is still practiced in China, um, in hospitals and actually, uh, it's their, their entire training in China and in Japan is dual East Asian medicine with. western medicine. And actually, uh, Bao, back in the Mao Zedong era, he tried to get rid of Chinese medicine. Yes. Uh, and he couldn't, so he wound up just accepting it in this, like, very public display of drinking herbal medicine, et cetera, et cetera.
Sydney Malawer: So, um, he really tried to get rid of it to, like, modernize, but it just, it didn't work. It didn't help because Western medicine on its own wasn't meeting people's needs in China when they were so used to this other sophisticated medical system. Um, but having both is extremely helpful and makes it much [Page//00:16:00] more powerful.
Sydney Malawer: So, um, so yeah, so that's like the. The interesting part about Chinese medicine is that, uh, we have, a lot of people will have, at least I had this perspective that it was more of like this hippie, you know, um, like energy medicine. It is, it's actually not. It's a very, very sophisticated system of medicine that has multiple arms.
Sydney Malawer: Um, acupuncture is just one of them. And, uh, as I was saying, I was telling you before, but I'll say it now too, acupuncture is what is known the most about Chinese medicine. Um, but the character for acupuncture includes moxibustion, which is a technique where you burn, uh, mugwort. on and near strategic points in the United States without burning the person, um, because, you know, we're a litigious society, but, um, in China and Japan and Korea and A lot of places [Page//00:17:00] in East Asian, in East Asia, they, um, do burn the skin as a therapeutic Oh, interesting.
Sydney Malawer: Modality. But it's just as important as acupuncture. And for autoimmunity, I find if I had to choose one tool in terms of that particular arm of Chinese medicine, it would be moxibustion instead of needles. Interesting. It makes such a difference. So, um, so yeah. So that's one arm of Chinese medicine.
Sydney Malawer: Another arm is herbal medicine. Herbal medicine is super sophisticated. It's their own form of pharmacy. Um, and instead of taking, you know, studying and taking an active ingredient and hyperpotentializing it, they keep it in the herb because all of the other elements of the herb help to negotiate it coming into the tissues and into the cells, right?
Sydney Malawer: And that's the interesting part, is that, um, it's very, like, it's so scientific, even with the [Page//00:18:00] herbal medicine. And now they do a lot of research into why the herbal medicine works, and they've actually tried. Um, in, in the United States, in the UK, in particular, um, I have a teacher, Mazen Al Khafaji. He, uh, is a T, he's the TCM dermatology expert, and he specializes in dermatology, autoimmunity, and allergic disease.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and he's been doing this for 40 years. Like, he's the go to expert. And so I trained with him for a year and took the hardest test of my life to pass his, his, like, diploma course. Um, but he Uh, has been consulted on a lot of these studies that are trying to, like, figure out what is the one herb that helps with, like, peanut allergy or eczema, and they can't get it less than four herbs in a formula.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah. Because it doesn't work on its own. It's the synergy between them.
Julie Michelson: Which makes, it makes total sense. Yeah. Total sense. So, and back to Moxie Bustian for a minute, because as I confess to you [Page//00:19:00] before we recorded, I had never heard of it. I've done interviews on Chinese medicine before and nobody's ever mentioned it.
Julie Michelson: Nobody else has it in their bio. Um, and you said it. I just want to circle back. Um, I'm guessing, you know, when you said that if you had to pick one, I'm guessing you don't usually pick one is, is kind of what I want to know. I don't, I don't.
Sydney Malawer: But if, um, and it depends on the, the issue at hand. So, um, like for rheumatism, 100 percent moxibustion over herbal medicine.
Sydney Malawer: For dermatology, 100 percent But what
Julie Michelson: about acupuncture? No?
Sydney Malawer: No. Acupuncture's, uh, yeah. If you're gonna go for, um, like, So I, I deal with a lot of, like, uh, joint pain. So, particularly autoimmune joint pain. So, like, PSA, psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis. Yep. Um, um, You know, polymyalgia, rheumatica, uh, a lot of different All the owies, yeah.
Sydney Malawer: Yes, all [Page//00:20:00] the owies. And, um, moxa bustion makes a huge difference. And that, that's the one time I will actually, with consent, burn with moxa bustion. Because it will immediately remove the joint pain. Nine out of ten. Really? Wow. And I send them home with stick on moxa so that they can do it daily.
Julie Michelson: Oh, cool. So, okay.
Julie Michelson: So then they can continue ongoing treatment themselves. A hundred
Sydney Malawer: percent. And that's the whole point. Like my, my goal in practice is to get somebody to not need me anymore. Right. Right. Yeah, me
Julie Michelson: too. I know it's a terrible business model, but it is what I'm here. I actually think it's a
Sydney Malawer: great business model because then you just help more people.
Julie Michelson: Right.
Sydney Malawer: And it keeps it interesting. Yeah. Right. Cause you get new cases and you're like, Oh, yeah. Okay.
Julie Michelson: This is interesting. I
Sydney Malawer: haven't seen this before. Let me go down the research rabbit hole.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Sydney Malawer: Um, But yeah, so that's, noxibustion is extremely powerful because it gets really deep down to the blood level.
Sydney Malawer: It works in the same way as [Page//00:21:00] needles, where needles will move what's called the qi, which is effectively like the, the energy within your body. So the nerve pulses, um, oxygen through the blood, things like that, uh, whatever brings energy into the system. It's really hard to compare, to really encapsulate qi in words.
Sydney Malawer: a Western mindset, but it's effectively everything that hours your cells and movement and talking. So it's like hormones is chi, um, nerve impulses is chi, things like that.
Julie Michelson: I think so, like life, this is so not, I'm sure accurate, but in my Lay mind is, you know, life force energy is what it's like, all of that, all of you need all of those things.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah, exactly. And so it's what makes you alive.
Julie Michelson: I want to back up, um, which is probably the first question I should have asked you, which would be, you know, what is. [Page//00:22:00] And I, this is a broad question, but what is the Chinese medicine approach to autoimmunity? Like what is going on in the body?
Sydney Malawer: Okay. It's a great, great question.
Sydney Malawer: There are four leading theories. I did my doctoral thesis on one of them because I found it to be the most relevant to today. So I will go into that one because we will be talking for seven hours if I went into the other three. Um, so it's a concept of, that's called yin fire. So, effectively, yin fire is the displacement of metabolic fire in the body.
Sydney Malawer: Right? So a Yin Fire scenario is the displacement of that metabolic fire. Because we have metabolism that's supposed to work on, you know, feeding these cells so that they do XYZ, and feeding these cells so that they do XYZ, and feeding the immune cells so that [Page//00:23:00] the innate and the adaptive immune system are balanced, and they're, like, fighting what's gonna hurt you, and preserving what's gonna, like, nourish you.
Sydney Malawer: Help you. Yeah. So a Yin Fire scenario is effectively a displacement of that. metabolic process, right? It's like a confusion in that metabolic process. Uh, I'm not going to go in deep into the Chinese theory where it's like, where it's like the, the spleen drops into the kidney. Like, we don't need to know that.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah. So the way I like to describe Yin fire scenarios or Yin fire. So, cause Yin fire itself is good. Yin fire is equivalent to metabolic fire. I think of Yin fire as the pilot light. And the, um, Yin fire scenario that causes autoimmunity to be when oil drips into the pilot light.
Julie Michelson: I love that. I'm such a visual person.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. So I love that.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah. When I teach, so I, I put together a course on Yin fire scenarios for practitioners. And like the [Page//00:24:00] image I use is like, um, it's someone in the kitchen who is, you know, by a stove, normal, happy, smiling, cooking. And then it. Goes to the next one where they, obviously, there's been like a grease fire and there's like burnt everywhere and there's soot on their face.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and that's kind of what happens in autoimmunity, is that you, through injudicious diet, Which is a big part of it, um, through genetics, through, uh, like HPA axis dysfunctions, aka high, really, really high stress, um, through, um, infectious disease that doesn't fully, that completely wreaks havoc on the system, oil drips into the pilot light, and then wreaks havoc on the system.
Sydney Malawer: And so the autoimmune symptoms is the system trying to go back to homeostasis after a while. Um, when there's still oil being dripped into the pilot light. So
Julie Michelson: are
Sydney Malawer: you
Julie Michelson: saying that the autoimmune symptoms are information? Wow. [Page//00:25:00] That's amazing. Yeah. I love, I love that. And I'm joking because to me, like if, if, if that's one thing that listeners, you know, constantly are reminded of is that their symptoms are there to tell them something's out of balance.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Sydney Malawer: Pain is your body trying to stabilize you. Love that. Yeah. That's what, that's what it is. When we talk, even when we talk about simple back pain, I don't try and just get rid of back pain when it comes into my clinic. I try to understand what is it protecting. So for example, there's a lot of people who, who get Ehlers Danlos syndrome or similar hypermobility syndromes.
Sydney Malawer: And almost all of them have neck pain. Okay. Mm hmm. Right? The reason they have neck pain is because the, um, cartilage in their spine is not stable enough to support their spine. [Page//00:26:00] So their body holds it with muscle. And that's why they have neck pain. So if you try and aggressively get rid of neck pain in somebody with Ehlers Danlos syndrome, you will make it worse over time.
Sydney Malawer: Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, that's just like an example of showing that, like, it, to your point. It's all information. Right. And you need to understand what that information is. So doing, so something like a biologic is never my first step. There are people that do need to go on biologics.
Julie Michelson: And I, there's always a time and a place.
Julie Michelson: And, and I had a client yesterday, a new client who's currently on a biologic. Um, and, and I love it. She used the word this, and I didn't even, we hadn't even gotten into it yet. You know, she's like, you know, as a bridge, She's a young mom, you know, but she's smart and she knows that, no, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life and I shouldn't have to.
Julie Michelson: And, [Page//00:27:00] and, um, when I, healed and came off of all my medications, including biologics and DMARDS and you name a category. I was on it. Um, I went through a phase, you know, kind of like how we have processes for grief and things of where I was like anti medication because I'd been so over medicated and told that was the only option and believed it for so long.
Julie Michelson: Um, and, and I've, I've come full circle now with like, there's always, there is a time and a place just like when you were talking about the hospitals Right? How they've got their Chinese medicine pharmacy filled with herbs and weird smelly things that do wonderful things, right? But if I need emergency surgery, that's not the answer I'm looking for.
Julie Michelson: Don't
Sydney Malawer: come to me if you break your arm, go to the doctor, right?
Julie Michelson: Right.
Sydney Malawer: Right. If you have a tumor, if you have a tumor, get it cut out. Don't get acupuncture. I mean,
Julie Michelson: get, get acupuncture, [Page//00:28:00]
Sydney Malawer: get acupuncture with it. But like, if you have a tumor, go get it cut out.
Julie Michelson: Right. Right. And that's, that's the, I always love to, to highlight, like we're nobody here is here bashing Western.
Julie Michelson: I, you know, the love of my life is a Western medical physician. Right. And he gets to use that training and knowledge with a functional medicine approach. And that's, it's the best of both worlds. Um, and so, you know, that's, that's the ultimate, I think, really, of, of being able to, to, to bring it all together when necessary.
Julie Michelson: The goal is, for me, to get to a place where you're consistently healthy enough and understand your body enough, where Western medicine really becomes emergency medicine. That's acute care. That's what it
Sydney Malawer: was. It, it stemmed from hero medicine. Yeah. Right? It stemmed from hero medicine, which was all about these heroic gestures, which does help when you [Page//00:29:00] need those heroic gestures.
Sydney Malawer: Autoimmunity does not respond to heroic gestures. Dermatology does not respond to heroic gestures. Right? The, like, there are a few cases where I will advise people to do Western in addition. to East Asian Medicine for Dermatology. For example, if you have shingles, go get on Valcyclovir and come to me so I can like moxa and needles.
Sydney Malawer: Needles is very, very helpful for shingles. Right. Needles and moxa are extremely helpful for shingles. Um, needles are also very good for hives. It kind of can like take it out immediately. Needles are not good for eczema. Needles are not good for, for psoriasis. Needles on their own. Needles will help, right, body calm the nervous system.
Sydney Malawer: Like slightly move all of the pieces in place so that you can metabolize herbal medicine well. Right? So I usually will [Page//00:30:00] suggest doing, so my treatment plans are, the shortest treatment plan I have written in the last three months is 11 pages, right? They are literally how to guides for each person to be like, okay, I'm here, I'm at A, I want to get to Z.
Sydney Malawer: How do I do that? And how do I push or pivot? How do I know to push or pivot? Right? So I literally, my second appointment with people, they're so overwhelmed by the treatment plan, but they're also so grateful. Right. I'm like, I'm not expecting you to do all this at once, that's why we see each other for the next six to eight weeks.
Sydney Malawer: Every week so that we can help you move the needle. Right.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, which I love. I remember the first time you told me about your treatment plans. And I was like, wow. But as somebody who loves a good guide, you know, I mean, that's me. I need to step up my game. That's, that's amazing. Well, because here's the thing.
Julie Michelson: You're [Page//00:31:00] giving people the understanding of what really. the healing path is.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah, and understanding because another realm of, well, two other realms of East Asian medicine, there's diet, right? Um, and particularly nutrition and that's When you overeat stuff and undereat stuff, um, and then there's the lifestyle aspect, right?
Sydney Malawer: So, like, mitigating overwork, mitigating stress response, right? Navigating stress, because I never say managing stress, because you cannot manage stress. The only thing you can do is navigate through it, and like, You know, and having the
Julie Michelson: tools to do that in a healthy
Sydney Malawer: way.
Julie Michelson: Yeah,
Sydney Malawer: exactly. There's a lot of at home treatments, right?
Sydney Malawer: There's, um, like when we deal with thyroid conditions, I'll always have them wash their neck because it's shown to, um, decrease antibodies in both Hashimoto's and graves, right? Like it's just shown. Okay. Now tell me more. So, [Page//00:32:00] uh, Korea has done a lot of really great research in this. Um, so, and then I have also seen it in my patients.
Sydney Malawer: Right? I actually just had a patient, so I have a patient who, um, she, she has Hashimoto's. She has thyroglobulin antibodies though, not TPO antibodies. Okay. So she went undiagnosed forever because they didn't test her thyroglobulin antibodies. That's a whole other conversation and I know there's been a lot about Hashis.
Sydney Malawer: But she was doing neck Gua Sha. Her thyroglobulin antibodies went from 67 to 16 in a matter of three months. Wow. She stopped Gua Sha ing. And nine months later it was up at, um, it was like her antibodies were up at 35. And what is gua shaing? Gua sha, so you take effectively a soup spoon, like one of those porcelain soup spoons.
Sydney Malawer: That's what I give people. This is like, this is your gift. And then you just scrape your, your neck, both the [Page//00:33:00] front and the back of your neck. And so what it's effectively doing, it's, yeah, it's allowing for blood flow and so it's allowing to it's like letting loose lymphocytes that are living in the tissue so that the lymphatic system can then take, it's not lymphatic massage at all, lymphatic is completely different.
Sydney Malawer: But, um, it's effectively loosening them so the lymphatic system can get rid of them.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Okay. Just like, I'm just sitting here now. It's very rare for me to be speechless. And I'm like, my mouth is hanging open for anybody listening on audio that can't see the expression on my face. Yeah.
Sydney Malawer: And it's hard because, um, so my, my thyroid mentor is a woman named Heidi Levy at New York.
Sydney Malawer: She's awesome. And she talked about someone sent her this article, um, this, this, um, scientific research article out of Korea about the, the Gua Sha for antibodies. And she threw it away. Cause she was like, this is bullshit. Oh, sorry. This is bull. Right. Say it. I don't know if we can Jersey. Okay. Good. Yeah. Um, so like, [Page//00:34:00] like this is BS.
Sydney Malawer: Like, she just threw it seems
Julie Michelson: so hard to believe. Which is why my mouth is hanging
Sydney Malawer: open. She's like, absolutely not. She's a very, very logical person. She's like, absolutely not. I'm out. She has Hashimoto's. But it, like, kind of stuck in her mind. She's like, I'm going to test it out on myself. So she took her blood.
Sydney Malawer: blood tests, found out what her antibodies were, did Gua Sha for a month, retook them. Without changing anything else, I'm guessing. Without changing anything else. Um, and then retook her, her labs and they had, and she was like, okay, maybe there's something to this. And then she kept looking for the research article and she can't find it.
Sydney Malawer: So she literally has a bounty out. So if anyone can find this article. Because it exists. Because it exists, she just, it was like through an email and then she like, you know, put it in her spam box Crazy, crazy bin.
Julie Michelson: In the
Sydney Malawer: crazy bin. Yeah. Um, so. But there are other articles coming out of Korea that show an, in, for [Page//00:35:00] Hashimoto specifically, doing Net Gua Sha will, um, decrease TSH and increase, increase free T4.
Julie Michelson: Wow, that's incredible. And I want to highlight another little piece of that story. Um, which is regarding like your patient with that you started with. Um, somebody just asked me the other day, you know, well, do you say you're in remission? Do you say you don't have rheumatoid arthritis anymore? And I was like, it's all semantics.
Julie Michelson: Like, it's not something I actually think about anymore. It's not a part of my life. However, I am a million percent certain that if I went back to living the way I was living that got me sick in the first place, I would be clinically diagnosable with rheumatoid arthritis again in the future. Like, there's no question.
Julie Michelson: Um, and that example just reminded me of, um, The, my, my sweetheart is a much [Page//00:36:00] gentler, kinder human than I am. And, and so when somebody, you know, has been on plan and it's working and you know, it's like, yay, and then they'd come back in that scenario of like, they're now they're not on plan and they're, and you can see on labs, it's not working.
Julie Michelson: Um, he's really great at just highlighting like, well, what you were doing was clearly working. And when you don't do it. It's not working. Yeah. So, there you
Sydney Malawer: go. That's the beauty of labs. Like, I run, I run labs on everyone because I need that baseline and I need to see, I need them to see progress because I'll see it in
Julie Michelson: the course.
Julie Michelson: My whole thing is how do you feel? But also, I'm a geek, and I love seeing antibodies correct. I love seeing inflammation markers go down, fill in the blank. The particular patient I was thinking about, you know, was somebody with prostate cancer. I wanted to see his PSA continuing to go back down instead of starting to trend upward again, you know.[Page//00:37:00]
Julie Michelson: Um, and so there is this reward of, you know, being able to track and, and see like, oh, yeah. And, you know, if I don't work it, it doesn't work. It
Sydney Malawer: also, um, self reporting is really hard. Because you're with yourself 24 7. Yep. I had someone come in yesterday who, um, so he has psoriasis. He came in originally with nail psoriasis, but then he got a really, like, uh, effectively strep throat.
Sydney Malawer: And for psoriatic, strep throat is like one day. You have one day of a burning sore throat, and then because your, your body is, um, like, Th1 cytokine dominant, it just, like, knocks it out. But then, six to eight weeks later, you have a psoriatic, uh, psoriasis flare. And so that's what happened to him, is he had this sore throat, he was doing really well, his nail psoriasis was almost completely grown out, and then he, um, like, he came in, uh, in November with, like, actual, like, Now psoriatic lesions.
Sydney Malawer: His, um, he had [Page//00:38:00] scalp lesions that had like come down on his forehead. He had body lesions that he never had before and he was freaking out. And he kept saying, I've never had this before, I've never had this before, I've never had this before. I keep going deep down there. I was like, actually I've had this before.
Sydney Malawer: When I was A teenager when I was 20 or when I was, and I was like, okay, so you just, like, and for him, it's, if it's on his torso and he can cover it, he didn't really pay attention to it. It's when it's in visible areas that it starts freaking him out. But we were able to get him on track. He was, he went, his body lesions went away in about eight weeks, which is actually pretty fast for psoriasis.
Sydney Malawer: Um, but he's, his nails got a little bit worse and his, his scalp is actually significantly better. I'm pretty impressed with his scalp. His nails got a little bit worse. So I saw him. yesterday and he's like freaking out about his nails and I'm looking at his scalp and his scalp is clear. It's the clearest I've seen it ever.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and his nails are the way they are because he was gardening and they [Page//00:39:00] were, um, responsive to the Kubner phenomenon, right? Which is when you, uh, in sites of trauma, you'll get psoriasis. So because he had been working with his hands, his nails got worse, but they, he had told me like, they were almost all like, they were like, he's like, Oh, they were kind of almost clear.
Sydney Malawer: And then I did this, like, what's wrong, what's not working? I'm like, no, no, no, it just means, from a Chinese medical perspective, that you have toxic heat in the blood level that we just need to Then work on right? Like it's it's information,
Julie Michelson: right?
Sydney Malawer: Um, and I love that. I
Julie Michelson: think it's part of one of my I always tell clients, you know, one of my biggest roles as a coach is making you look over your shoulder to realize the progress you've made because we don't I love that you brought up the self reporting or like last week.
Julie Michelson: Um, a client was in clinic in person with her husband. They both had lab reviews and she's a Long, complicated case. Fabulous, [Page//00:40:00] fabulous lady. And after, you know, she gave her thing, I turned to him and I was like, and what have you noticed? Right. Because we do discounts. All the time, you know, what's going on in our body or like you said, if, if we don't think other people can see it or we're pushing through it, we just, we're, we're not acknowledging, we're not aware.
Julie Michelson: But
Sydney Malawer: it's funny because I talked to this, this person and I, because he had eliminated all of the super inflammatory foods and he had snuck all of them back in and that, so his nails were completely clear. And then he's like, Oh, something's wrong. Like, this isn't working on me. I'm broken or something. I know, but I'm like, no, you reintroduce these foods.
Sydney Malawer: Cause, effect. Yeah, and, and I don't, like, I'm at the, with him, I've, I've mentioned going back on Otezlet to him because of the, it's really hard for him to Because if you can't do
Julie Michelson: the, yeah. I told him that that's an option. I had a client yesterday saying she was feeling sad because, she's like, I just [Page//00:41:00] don't think I can eat bread anymore.
Julie Michelson: And I'm like, what kind of bread? Last I had spoken to her, she was gluten free. I had a whole wheat bread sandwich the other day and man, my gut was a wreck. And I was like, you can't
Sydney Malawer: connect your own dots now. I know. And it's hard. It's hard because I get it. He wants to live the way he wants to live. And he's had psoriasis since he was a kid.
Sydney Malawer: He's had scalp psoriasis since he was a kid. And so, um, I just, I, I, that's where like Western medicine does work because it does suppress. symptoms if you want to keep living the lifestyle you want to live and I, you know, I approached that with him and I was like, listen, like you're doing pretty well now even with some integration.
Sydney Malawer: You have a little bit of nail psoriasis. That's from the Kupner. Let's focus on herbal medicine for you and then he gets consistent, um, cause he lives pretty far away. So he comes to see me once every six to eight weeks and then he gets community acupuncture cause he, he lives about an hour and a half away, um, closer to him so that it's more [Page//00:42:00] accessible.
Sydney Malawer: That's pretty cool. Um, because one of the things about psoriatics is we have a personality type where the way I describe it is we turn our, um, hobbies into obligations. And so we tend to be hyper, hyper stressed out people and acupuncture minimally, even if it's needles in the wrong place, will calm down the nervous system and allow for psoriatics to like, not get so overwhelmed.
Julie Michelson: Interesting. I, I think, um, but that's interesting to hear you say that about psoriatics specifically. Um, somebody had asked me once, you know, do you work with, do you see a fair amount of, um, control freaks or, and I'm like, every client, I mean, it may look different on the outside, but yeah, every client.
Julie Michelson: Perfectionism is like, and it took me, I can't tell you how many years to then look in the mirror. And be like, hmm, [Page//00:43:00] er, if I should look at myself, um, and, and so, you know, and these are things that serve us until they don't, I don't know.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. And so that's the thing is like, I think one of the reasons why I gravitate towards autoimmunity and dermatology, um, is one, because it's, uh, very much, there aren't very many options in Western medicine.
Sydney Malawer: Right. There's aren't. Um, I get a lot of people who are at their wits end. I get a lot of people who are like, I'm coming to you out of sheer desperation. I literally had a patient who would faint with needles, including blood draws, and she had, she had really bad eczema and she came to me, she's like, I don't know what else to do.
Sydney Malawer: So I'm willing to risk fainting to figure this out. And. Yeah. Yeah. He never fainted on my table, thank God. Uh, she fainted in other acupuncture clinics, but like, um, because I referred her to a, a community clinic when it, so now we have a community room within my clinic. But before when we didn't, I would [Page//00:44:00] refer her to this like one practitioner in a community clinic nearby who I knew and I studied with, and I like gave her the baby needles.
Sydney Malawer: I was like, use only these needles on this particular patient. Um, and she still passed out once. But, um, but she's better. Worth it to her to get better. Yeah. She is, she made a great recovery. It took her a while because she was a teacher and she kept getting sick. And with eczema, you are TH1 cytokine deficient.
Sydney Malawer: So you actually catch colds really easily and then it triggers your eczema. So it kept being like this like back and forth. Cycle. Yeah. Yeah, but she eventually, her immunity got better. Her, her eczema is significantly better. Um, she was dependent on steroid creams for 20 years and now she uses it once every four months.
Sydney Malawer: When she has like a tiny bit on her heel and she wants to wear sandals. Um, she just went through like a whole pregnancy and had a really smooth birth. And, um, I haven't actually talked to her in a couple of weeks because she's in, you know, complete postpartum mama [Page//00:45:00] mode. But, um, she, you know, she was like pretty stable throughout her pregnancy.
Sydney Malawer: It, it flared, her eczema flared like twice. Um, and we couldn't use herbal medicine. We just, um, Because with pregnancy you can't really do, I mean you can, I just don't know how to, right. Um, so I usually refer out. It's not wor Yeah.
Julie Michelson: That, that's not, yeah. And I can feel the like, this is why you do what you do.
Julie Michelson: Right. Hundred percent. I love it. I love it. So here is some people's least favorite part of the podcast. My favorite part, I think it's listener's favorite part too. . What is, it could be anything, one step that listeners can take today to start to support their health.
Sydney Malawer: A really good question.
Julie Michelson: I know, it's a tricky one. It's tough.
Sydney Malawer: I think [Page//00:46:00] the first step is, uh, is assessing what they're doing and, like, making a list of, like, good, bad, missing. So things they know that are good for them, things they know that are bad for them and things that they might be missing from their life. I love
Julie Michelson: that. I love it. Yeah. I love how you got, you got, you got like lots of things in that one step too.
Julie Michelson: I knew you were going to, but like masterfully, you did it legally. I love it. That's great. Because you know, we all, We have more knowledge and intuition than we realize, and so I love that, just assessing.
Sydney Malawer: I tell people this all the time. Um, you know more about your condition than any of your practitioners.
Julie Michelson: Yep.
Sydney Malawer: So, and what I hate is when my, my patients aren't taken seriously. Not just by Western, by any other practitioner. Right. Yeah. Right. I literally, I had somebody come in who was [Page//00:47:00] so dismissed by his last acupuncturist, Very good. Um, who pretty much said his insomnia was because Uh, he, quote unquote, ate like Gwyneth Paltrow, and I was like, that is so mean, like, no, that doesn't, that's not the only thing, like, look at his whole, like, he was a therapist, and so he, you know, was taking on a lot of people's energies, and like, um, he wasn't processing them well.
Sydney Malawer: Right. Right? So I'm like, there's so much more to it than just like, you are a vegetarian and don't eat enough. There's never one. It's never one thing. Never one thing. Yeah. And it's
Julie Michelson: never one thing that solves it either. No. Cause we're complex. Whole humans. Exactly. And so, yeah. Uh, I love that. And I love that you're, you're, it was about a man because so often we talk about, because it is so common, especially in the autoimmune world of women being belittled and women not being heard, and women getting offered antidepressants [Page//00:48:00] because their doctors don't know how to help them or don't understand what's going on with them.
Julie Michelson: Mm-Hmm. . Um, and it's, it's happening. Happens to spend too. So
Sydney Malawer: No, it does, it happens to, um. A lot, like, a lot of different people are dismissed and it sucks because Western medicine is a do we intervene or do we not game. There's no prevention. There's no, except for functional, like, there's no real prevention.
Sydney Malawer: There's no, I've literally had people, I had, I have this one patient, he's so lovely, um, and it's also he, he's trans, um, so it's even more marginalized than women in healthcare. Sure. Yeah. But he has so many different markers for different autoimmune conditions, but none of them lead up to a diagnosis. And none of them are high enough for them to intervene.
Sydney Malawer: So they literally just say, you have to live in pain. There's nothing we can do for you.
Julie Michelson: Well, but the beautiful thing is instead of him getting stuck in that system like I did for over a decade, taking all [Page//00:49:00] of the medications, he had to keep searching and found you.
Sydney Malawer: He did. And honestly, he made, he was having asthma and he got an inhaler and it wasn't working.
Sydney Malawer: And when you look at the rest of him, he has some sort of, he has some sort of connective tissue disease. We don't know what it is. It's not MCTD. It's not. So here's,
Julie Michelson: here's a question though. Do you need to know what it is in order to help him heal?
Sydney Malawer: No, but here's the thing. I thought of that. I'm like, he has these.
Sydney Malawer: issues with his muscles and his joints. What if the breathing is intercostal muscles? And so we did, um, acupuncture and herbal medicine for the intercostals and his breathing got 98 percent better. But, and so I, to the point where he like had me write a letter to his pulmonologist to be like, this is what we saw.
Sydney Malawer: This is what you missed. Yeah. Well, this is what we saw. He obviously has these other connective tissue issues. The intercostal muscles, are a huge part of [Page//00:50:00] that, so like you have to look at the whole person, not just the one symptom.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, and that is the, this, this jointed western approach, right? That's, that's why for what I'll call lifestyle illnesses, if you will, even with genetic components, still always lifestyle, um, just, that's not, that's not acute care and that's not what western medicine does as well.
Julie Michelson: Period. Yeah. Oh, well, I've kept you so, so long before I let you go. For people that are listening on the go, as I tend to when I'm listening to podcasts, where's the best place to find you?
Sydney Malawer: So my clinic website is tendervine health. Um, I have a personal website too But it's I don't really update it and it's mostly for other practitioners.
Sydney Malawer: But yeah, so it's tendervine t e n d e r v i n e health so if you google us we're there and We're [Page//00:51:00] based out of Berkeley, California. So we don't we don't Really do remote. Um, but if you wanna like pay attention, 'cause we try and write bog articles as much as possible because it's, it's not just me, it's a team.
Sydney Malawer: We're, we're a team of practitioners now. So. Yeah.
Julie Michelson: And amazing, amazing information you're putting out there, . Thank you. So thank you so very much. I appreciate all of the wisdom you shared with us today.
Sydney Malawer: No problem. Thanks Julie for having me.
Julie Michelson: For everyone listening, remember you can get the transcripts and show notes by visiting inspired living. show.
Julie Michelson: I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I'll see you next week.
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Julie Michelson: Welcome back to the [Page//00:01:00] inspired living with autoimmunity podcast. I'm your host, Julie Michelson. And today we are joined by Dr. Sidney Mallower, who runs the Tendervine Health, an acupuncture and integrative East Asian medicine practice in Berkeley, California, specializing in the treatment of complex conditions, in particular autoimmunity and dermatology.
Julie Michelson: Dr. Sidney's training is focused in traditional Japanese acupuncture and moxibustion, classical herbalism, and clinical integrative East Asian medicine. In today's conversation, we are demystifying autoimmunity from the Chinese medicine perspective, and Dr. Sidney explains how approaches like moxibustion can be autoimmune game changers.
Julie Michelson: Sydney, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Julie. It's great to be here. I am so excited for our conversation today, and I would love to start by having you share some of your own journey with listeners. Um, because I know [Page//00:02:00] you have a story that's going to make people lean in.
Sydney Malawer: So, yeah, so, um, I have autoimmunity.
Sydney Malawer: I've had it since I was seven. So I have a psoriasis. So, as a lot of people know, autoimmunity tends to come in threes. Um, so, my first one was psoriasis, which I had when I was seven. Um, which is very rare for psoriasis, because usually psoriasis happens after puberty, not before. So, that means it's a very, like, hard to treat psoriasis.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and so, I just remember, like, itching my whole life. And, I grew up with that, and I went to doctors, and they gave me steroid creams, and, you know. Then I was in college, um, and it got really bad. So my junior year of college, it was on 75 percent of my body. Uh, and I went to school in upstate New York, where it's bitter, bitter cold, and my psoriasis is always worse in the winter.
Sydney Malawer: And then I, um, [Page//00:03:00] I was just like at my wits end, and I went to the doctor, and they're like, well, it's, the only option for you is a biologic. Which, I was 20. And they effectively were like, Yeah, one of the big risks is, um, Like, leukemia lymphoma. Because it cuts off the inflammation process, Which includes tumor necrosis factor.
Sydney Malawer: Which is what actually kills tumors. So, I was at my wit's end. I'm like, I'm 20 years old. Um, and I respect people who want to go down that route. Just for me, I needed other options. I was like, this can't be the only option. And so my dad had suggested I actually go see a naturopath. And I was like, okay, I didn't know what it was, right?
Sydney Malawer: I'm from New York, we didn't know what naturopaths were. Um, so I went to a naturopath and within that conversation they're like, I think it had something to do with your gut, like what you're eating. So let's do an elimination, um, and then check back in three weeks. So she gave me like a really great protocol for an elimination where we took out the seven major allergens, [Page//00:04:00] um, and then a plan for reintroducing them.
Sydney Malawer: And in the three weeks I was off, my psoriasis reduced by 50%.
Julie Michelson: Which not so I'd love to be pretend I'm surprised,
Sydney Malawer: but it was mind blowing for me because I was like in this conversation with the naturopath initially, she was like, um, She asked about my digestion, which my dermatologist had never asked about my digestion, and I had awful digestion my whole life.
Sydney Malawer: I remember I always had tummy aches, um, but I was at the point where I, you know, it was my junior year of school, a lot of pressure, and I remember it felt like I was passing gravel in my intestines. Oh. And I just thought, Like, I'm Jewish. Jews tend to have poor digestion, right? We're a little sensitive.
Sydney Malawer: We're a little sensitive, so I was like, I have Jewish tummy. Like, this is no big deal. This is just what I'm, I was just doled out with. I'm diagnosing
Julie Michelson: you with Jewish tummy. That is awesome. Yeah, pretty much. But also, kind of [Page//00:05:00] the story I had in my head my whole life. Yeah.
Sydney Malawer: I was just like, I have Jewish tummy, right?
Sydney Malawer: Um, and it's funny because as I learned further on, Ashkenazi Jews have a, four times more likelihood for inflammatory bowel disease than anyone else. So that, so just tell me is real, but right.
Julie Michelson: But it's, um,
Sydney Malawer: yeah, but it was a thing. So I was like, and I had never put the two and two together with the deterioration of my skin and the deterioration of my digestion.
Sydney Malawer: And so in those three weeks, I felt great. I had more energy. I didn't feel like I was passing gravel. And then when I started reintroductions, when I reintroduced gluten, particularly wheat, she didn't say gluten at the time because this is 08, where gluten wasn't exactly a thing. But when I reintroduced wheat, I got all that back again.
Sydney Malawer: And my psoriasis started getting bad again. So I took it out and I've been gluten free ever since. And it's so funny because people ask if I miss it. And I'm like, no, because I know how painful it was when I was on it. Yeah. Um, [Page//00:06:00] so, but it was miraculous. So in that, that, you know, in those three weeks, it went down by 50%, and then my digestion got better, and then over time, it went away.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and since 2008, so that was how many years ago, 16 years ago? Um, I've had three major flares, when before, I was consistently flared since I was 8 years old. And the three flares coincided with major emotional events in my life. And so, Um, that started really getting my, my wheels turning where I was like, Oh, the system is more like skin ailments are not just skin deep.
Sydney Malawer: Right, right. And I started like really going for more alternative methods because Western medicine in my case did not meet my needs. Right. And so I started going down this path for my own health, right? I worked in something completely different for 10 years. I worked in, um, social enterprise. So I helped build social, socially minded startups for [Page//00:07:00] 10 years.
Sydney Malawer: And then, um, I remember I was 29 and I was like, Oh my God, I'm turning 30 next year. What do I actually want to be? What do I want? Who do I want to be? Yeah. Legit. I was like, Oh, cause my entire twenties was doing things that people told me I'd be good at. Right. So that's why I worked in social startups. I was really, really good in like understanding and reading people.
Sydney Malawer: I'm really good at like responding on the fly and like building things from scratch. And so that's why I did that because people told me I'd be good at it. And then when I was turning 29, I was like, Oh, I, I don't know if I want to do this the rest of my life, right? I don't know if I want to work in some startups.
Sydney Malawer: I'm like burnt out and I'm working for other people. And I'm a, I was an impossible person to manage. God bless all my managers in the past. No, really. The only reason they kept me on is because they needed me because I was so productive.
Julie Michelson: Right. But,
Sydney Malawer: um, But yeah, so I was like, okay, what do I actually want to be when I grew up?
Sydney Malawer: And I did a whole analysis for myself [Page//00:08:00] and I realized I wanted to work directly with the beneficiaries of my day to day work. I wanted mentorship. Um, and I wanted more control over what doing what I thought was right. So, meaning, I didn't want a boss telling me what to do, I wanted either to have a boss that let me be subject matter expert and give me autonomy, or be my own boss.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and so, I was like, okay, I know kind of what I want to do, but in what realm? And so I went to my Google search history, and my Google search history is all, you know, What, like, acupressure points for this, and, um, not foods to help with asthma, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And so I was like, okay, there's something here.
Sydney Malawer: And at the time, I hadn't realized it, so I had befriended an acupuncturist. Okay. Because I was living in MedellÃn, Colombia at the time, and so I wound up befriending an acupuncturist who would invite me into treatments and started mentoring me before I consciously knew that's what I [Page//00:09:00] was going to go into.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and then I decided on Chinese medicine in particular because one, acupuncture really, really helped me in those emotional upheavals. I hadn't started the herbal side yet, but eventually when I was in school I did and my psoriasis got significantly better after that, um, from another flare that I had.
Sydney Malawer: And then, um, I, so I was already in it, but I didn't know, like it wasn't conscious in my mind that like I was already being mentored in this medicine. Right, right. And then one of the reasons why I chose that as opposed to like Ayurveda or other types of like, um, medicines that have a whole systems approach, uh, was because in the United States, Uh, especially in California, which is where I was planning on moving, um, acupuncturists are considered primary care providers.
Sydney Malawer: So they're taken more seriously as a bridge between East and West. And so I eventually decided that I, you know, quit my job, took six months off to rest because I was so burnt out, and then went to grad [Page//00:10:00] school. And then I started my practice and I focused my entire practice in autoimmunity and dermatology.
Julie Michelson: I love it. Yeah. And I love the, I want to be careful what rabbit hole, cause I could talk to you for five hours, um, starting up, you know, when nobody wants to hear our conversation about growing up on the East coast as a Jewish girl with Jewish tummy. Yeah. Or why, even though certain people, you know, are like, I don't believe it.
Julie Michelson: You'd never cheat with gluten is exactly what you said. No. Why? I would never do that to myself.
Sydney Malawer: No, it hurts. And the more I learn about celiac, I'm like convinced that I have it.
Julie Michelson: Yep. Um, I just,
Sydney Malawer: but I can't get diagnosed now because I would have to eat gluten.
Julie Michelson: Right. Well, and that's how I, that, that was what happened to me was my son was diagnosed with gluten, gluten diagnosed with celiac when he was 12.
Julie Michelson: I went gluten free to support him, you know, middle school. And I remember it was like right before his Bar Mitzvah, [Page//00:11:00] like, you know, and back then I actually. You know, thought that, that it was so important, you know, such an important part of that age to eat junk food, you know, just kind of funny. Um, and then my rheumatologist was like, Oh, well, I bet you have celiac.
Julie Michelson: I bet that was your first autoimmune and you just don't know it. And same thing. They were like, well, we'll do a biopsy, but you have to start eating gluten. That was as far as I got. I tried, I failed, and I will never do it again.
Sydney Malawer: I, I won't even try. I was, like, literally, look at all of the extra intestinal manifestations of celiac disease.
Sydney Malawer: I even had the dermatitis herpetiformis. Like, I remember it as a kid. I would have these long wheels. Yeah, these long wheels on my arms and legs and that's what dermatitis or pediformis is, right? Yeah, it can show up on the on the um abdomen too, but like [Page//00:12:00] it looked exactly like the pictures and I was like, oh crap Okay.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. And my, my son actually didn't present with any GI issues. It
Sydney Malawer: was extra intestinal.
Julie Michelson: Yup. And luckily, you know, we found out much to the surprise of everybody, cause he had been tested, you know, blood tested back then a million times, um, which nobody ever told me didn't mean anything. Um, and we, he was doing it as a rule out.
Julie Michelson: And they were like, I remember literally when getting the call from the pediatric GI doctor, it was like, 530 at night and I had a chicken pot pie in the oven. Oh no. It's like, wait, what do we do? Cute. Anyway, see, we could go in a million directions. I want, I want to circle back to, um, because I do love, there are not enough practitioners focusing on autoimmune and [Page//00:13:00] dermatology and not a lot of.
Julie Michelson: true healers focusing on dermatology, right? Nobody's asking why, not nobody. Not enough at, you know, connecting gut health and, and all the things I always, you know, nobody has a steroid cream deficiency. Like, that's not really what's going on. What's going on. Um, but I want to dig in a little bit and, and have you teach us.
Julie Michelson: About Chinese medicine. Um, and, and this approach because you're a trained functional medicine provider, but I know from, from chatting and reading, um, that, you know, you don't really Chinese medicine is your approach. And, and yes, you have tools. from being a functional medicine provider, but really, you come at it from a different, a, a, a different perspective.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah. So, um, yeah, this is a, it's a great topic. So, [Page//00:14:00] first I want to address some things. So, it's funny because you say healer. I am not a healer.
Julie Michelson: You're a conduit.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah, it's more like, I don't feel like I'm a healer, and I feel like having that perspective makes it much easier to be more scientific. Right? And, and also, like, when I think about it, um, If anything, I'm twwhatever I give people is 20 percent of the solution.
Sydney Malawer: The other 80 percent is them and their genetics and their habits. Right? And that's true of any medicine.
Julie Michelson: Right. But I'm guessing you're not giving them that 20 percent and sending them out, out the door. Oh, no, no, no, no. I definitely support. Yeah. A
Sydney Malawer: hundred percent. We're a support system for sure. But like sometimes I, cause I've seen it, I've seen people in my profession be like, I'm a healer, but like this person's not getting better.
Sydney Malawer: What am I doing wrong? And I'm like, no, no, no.
Julie Michelson: So
Sydney Malawer: it goes to take a step out and be like, this is their healing journey. I am a helper on that journey. What more can I do to help [Page//00:15:00] them turn a corner? So that's the first thing and it feeds into Chinese medicine. So Chinese medicine is a very sophisticated medical system.
Sydney Malawer: It is still practiced in China, um, in hospitals and actually, uh, it's their, their entire training in China and in Japan is dual East Asian medicine with. western medicine. And actually, uh, Bao, back in the Mao Zedong era, he tried to get rid of Chinese medicine. Yes. Uh, and he couldn't, so he wound up just accepting it in this, like, very public display of drinking herbal medicine, et cetera, et cetera.
Sydney Malawer: So, um, he really tried to get rid of it to, like, modernize, but it just, it didn't work. It didn't help because Western medicine on its own wasn't meeting people's needs in China when they were so used to this other sophisticated medical system. Um, but having both is extremely helpful and makes it much [Page//00:16:00] more powerful.
Sydney Malawer: So, um, so yeah, so that's like the. The interesting part about Chinese medicine is that, uh, we have, a lot of people will have, at least I had this perspective that it was more of like this hippie, you know, um, like energy medicine. It is, it's actually not. It's a very, very sophisticated system of medicine that has multiple arms.
Sydney Malawer: Um, acupuncture is just one of them. And, uh, as I was saying, I was telling you before, but I'll say it now too, acupuncture is what is known the most about Chinese medicine. Um, but the character for acupuncture includes moxibustion, which is a technique where you burn, uh, mugwort. on and near strategic points in the United States without burning the person, um, because, you know, we're a litigious society, but, um, in China and Japan and Korea and A lot of places [Page//00:17:00] in East Asian, in East Asia, they, um, do burn the skin as a therapeutic Oh, interesting.
Sydney Malawer: Modality. But it's just as important as acupuncture. And for autoimmunity, I find if I had to choose one tool in terms of that particular arm of Chinese medicine, it would be moxibustion instead of needles. Interesting. It makes such a difference. So, um, so yeah. So that's one arm of Chinese medicine.
Sydney Malawer: Another arm is herbal medicine. Herbal medicine is super sophisticated. It's their own form of pharmacy. Um, and instead of taking, you know, studying and taking an active ingredient and hyperpotentializing it, they keep it in the herb because all of the other elements of the herb help to negotiate it coming into the tissues and into the cells, right?
Sydney Malawer: And that's the interesting part, is that, um, it's very, like, it's so scientific, even with the [Page//00:18:00] herbal medicine. And now they do a lot of research into why the herbal medicine works, and they've actually tried. Um, in, in the United States, in the UK, in particular, um, I have a teacher, Mazen Al Khafaji. He, uh, is a T, he's the TCM dermatology expert, and he specializes in dermatology, autoimmunity, and allergic disease.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and he's been doing this for 40 years. Like, he's the go to expert. And so I trained with him for a year and took the hardest test of my life to pass his, his, like, diploma course. Um, but he Uh, has been consulted on a lot of these studies that are trying to, like, figure out what is the one herb that helps with, like, peanut allergy or eczema, and they can't get it less than four herbs in a formula.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah. Because it doesn't work on its own. It's the synergy between them.
Julie Michelson: Which makes, it makes total sense. Yeah. Total sense. So, and back to Moxie Bustian for a minute, because as I confess to you [Page//00:19:00] before we recorded, I had never heard of it. I've done interviews on Chinese medicine before and nobody's ever mentioned it.
Julie Michelson: Nobody else has it in their bio. Um, and you said it. I just want to circle back. Um, I'm guessing, you know, when you said that if you had to pick one, I'm guessing you don't usually pick one is, is kind of what I want to know. I don't, I don't.
Sydney Malawer: But if, um, and it depends on the, the issue at hand. So, um, like for rheumatism, 100 percent moxibustion over herbal medicine.
Sydney Malawer: For dermatology, 100 percent But what
Julie Michelson: about acupuncture? No?
Sydney Malawer: No. Acupuncture's, uh, yeah. If you're gonna go for, um, like, So I, I deal with a lot of, like, uh, joint pain. So, particularly autoimmune joint pain. So, like, PSA, psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis. Yep. Um, um, You know, polymyalgia, rheumatica, uh, a lot of different All the owies, yeah.
Sydney Malawer: Yes, all [Page//00:20:00] the owies. And, um, moxa bustion makes a huge difference. And that, that's the one time I will actually, with consent, burn with moxa bustion. Because it will immediately remove the joint pain. Nine out of ten. Really? Wow. And I send them home with stick on moxa so that they can do it daily.
Julie Michelson: Oh, cool. So, okay.
Julie Michelson: So then they can continue ongoing treatment themselves. A hundred
Sydney Malawer: percent. And that's the whole point. Like my, my goal in practice is to get somebody to not need me anymore. Right. Right. Yeah, me
Julie Michelson: too. I know it's a terrible business model, but it is what I'm here. I actually think it's a
Sydney Malawer: great business model because then you just help more people.
Julie Michelson: Right.
Sydney Malawer: And it keeps it interesting. Yeah. Right. Cause you get new cases and you're like, Oh, yeah. Okay.
Julie Michelson: This is interesting. I
Sydney Malawer: haven't seen this before. Let me go down the research rabbit hole.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Sydney Malawer: Um, But yeah, so that's, noxibustion is extremely powerful because it gets really deep down to the blood level.
Sydney Malawer: It works in the same way as [Page//00:21:00] needles, where needles will move what's called the qi, which is effectively like the, the energy within your body. So the nerve pulses, um, oxygen through the blood, things like that, uh, whatever brings energy into the system. It's really hard to compare, to really encapsulate qi in words.
Sydney Malawer: a Western mindset, but it's effectively everything that hours your cells and movement and talking. So it's like hormones is chi, um, nerve impulses is chi, things like that.
Julie Michelson: I think so, like life, this is so not, I'm sure accurate, but in my Lay mind is, you know, life force energy is what it's like, all of that, all of you need all of those things.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah, exactly. And so it's what makes you alive.
Julie Michelson: I want to back up, um, which is probably the first question I should have asked you, which would be, you know, what is. [Page//00:22:00] And I, this is a broad question, but what is the Chinese medicine approach to autoimmunity? Like what is going on in the body?
Sydney Malawer: Okay. It's a great, great question.
Sydney Malawer: There are four leading theories. I did my doctoral thesis on one of them because I found it to be the most relevant to today. So I will go into that one because we will be talking for seven hours if I went into the other three. Um, so it's a concept of, that's called yin fire. So, effectively, yin fire is the displacement of metabolic fire in the body.
Sydney Malawer: Right? So a Yin Fire scenario is the displacement of that metabolic fire. Because we have metabolism that's supposed to work on, you know, feeding these cells so that they do XYZ, and feeding these cells so that they do XYZ, and feeding the immune cells so that [Page//00:23:00] the innate and the adaptive immune system are balanced, and they're, like, fighting what's gonna hurt you, and preserving what's gonna, like, nourish you.
Sydney Malawer: Help you. Yeah. So a Yin Fire scenario is effectively a displacement of that. metabolic process, right? It's like a confusion in that metabolic process. Uh, I'm not going to go in deep into the Chinese theory where it's like, where it's like the, the spleen drops into the kidney. Like, we don't need to know that.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah. So the way I like to describe Yin fire scenarios or Yin fire. So, cause Yin fire itself is good. Yin fire is equivalent to metabolic fire. I think of Yin fire as the pilot light. And the, um, Yin fire scenario that causes autoimmunity to be when oil drips into the pilot light.
Julie Michelson: I love that. I'm such a visual person.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. So I love that.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah. When I teach, so I, I put together a course on Yin fire scenarios for practitioners. And like the [Page//00:24:00] image I use is like, um, it's someone in the kitchen who is, you know, by a stove, normal, happy, smiling, cooking. And then it. Goes to the next one where they, obviously, there's been like a grease fire and there's like burnt everywhere and there's soot on their face.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and that's kind of what happens in autoimmunity, is that you, through injudicious diet, Which is a big part of it, um, through genetics, through, uh, like HPA axis dysfunctions, aka high, really, really high stress, um, through, um, infectious disease that doesn't fully, that completely wreaks havoc on the system, oil drips into the pilot light, and then wreaks havoc on the system.
Sydney Malawer: And so the autoimmune symptoms is the system trying to go back to homeostasis after a while. Um, when there's still oil being dripped into the pilot light. So
Julie Michelson: are
Sydney Malawer: you
Julie Michelson: saying that the autoimmune symptoms are information? Wow. [Page//00:25:00] That's amazing. Yeah. I love, I love that. And I'm joking because to me, like if, if, if that's one thing that listeners, you know, constantly are reminded of is that their symptoms are there to tell them something's out of balance.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Sydney Malawer: Pain is your body trying to stabilize you. Love that. Yeah. That's what, that's what it is. When we talk, even when we talk about simple back pain, I don't try and just get rid of back pain when it comes into my clinic. I try to understand what is it protecting. So for example, there's a lot of people who, who get Ehlers Danlos syndrome or similar hypermobility syndromes.
Sydney Malawer: And almost all of them have neck pain. Okay. Mm hmm. Right? The reason they have neck pain is because the, um, cartilage in their spine is not stable enough to support their spine. [Page//00:26:00] So their body holds it with muscle. And that's why they have neck pain. So if you try and aggressively get rid of neck pain in somebody with Ehlers Danlos syndrome, you will make it worse over time.
Sydney Malawer: Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, that's just like an example of showing that, like, it, to your point. It's all information. Right. And you need to understand what that information is. So doing, so something like a biologic is never my first step. There are people that do need to go on biologics.
Julie Michelson: And I, there's always a time and a place.
Julie Michelson: And, and I had a client yesterday, a new client who's currently on a biologic. Um, and, and I love it. She used the word this, and I didn't even, we hadn't even gotten into it yet. You know, she's like, you know, as a bridge, She's a young mom, you know, but she's smart and she knows that, no, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life and I shouldn't have to.
Julie Michelson: And, [Page//00:27:00] and, um, when I, healed and came off of all my medications, including biologics and DMARDS and you name a category. I was on it. Um, I went through a phase, you know, kind of like how we have processes for grief and things of where I was like anti medication because I'd been so over medicated and told that was the only option and believed it for so long.
Julie Michelson: Um, and, and I've, I've come full circle now with like, there's always, there is a time and a place just like when you were talking about the hospitals Right? How they've got their Chinese medicine pharmacy filled with herbs and weird smelly things that do wonderful things, right? But if I need emergency surgery, that's not the answer I'm looking for.
Julie Michelson: Don't
Sydney Malawer: come to me if you break your arm, go to the doctor, right?
Julie Michelson: Right.
Sydney Malawer: Right. If you have a tumor, if you have a tumor, get it cut out. Don't get acupuncture. I mean,
Julie Michelson: get, get acupuncture, [Page//00:28:00]
Sydney Malawer: get acupuncture with it. But like, if you have a tumor, go get it cut out.
Julie Michelson: Right. Right. And that's, that's the, I always love to, to highlight, like we're nobody here is here bashing Western.
Julie Michelson: I, you know, the love of my life is a Western medical physician. Right. And he gets to use that training and knowledge with a functional medicine approach. And that's, it's the best of both worlds. Um, and so, you know, that's, that's the ultimate, I think, really, of, of being able to, to, to bring it all together when necessary.
Julie Michelson: The goal is, for me, to get to a place where you're consistently healthy enough and understand your body enough, where Western medicine really becomes emergency medicine. That's acute care. That's what it
Sydney Malawer: was. It, it stemmed from hero medicine. Yeah. Right? It stemmed from hero medicine, which was all about these heroic gestures, which does help when you [Page//00:29:00] need those heroic gestures.
Sydney Malawer: Autoimmunity does not respond to heroic gestures. Dermatology does not respond to heroic gestures. Right? The, like, there are a few cases where I will advise people to do Western in addition. to East Asian Medicine for Dermatology. For example, if you have shingles, go get on Valcyclovir and come to me so I can like moxa and needles.
Sydney Malawer: Needles is very, very helpful for shingles. Right. Needles and moxa are extremely helpful for shingles. Um, needles are also very good for hives. It kind of can like take it out immediately. Needles are not good for eczema. Needles are not good for, for psoriasis. Needles on their own. Needles will help, right, body calm the nervous system.
Sydney Malawer: Like slightly move all of the pieces in place so that you can metabolize herbal medicine well. Right? So I usually will [Page//00:30:00] suggest doing, so my treatment plans are, the shortest treatment plan I have written in the last three months is 11 pages, right? They are literally how to guides for each person to be like, okay, I'm here, I'm at A, I want to get to Z.
Sydney Malawer: How do I do that? And how do I push or pivot? How do I know to push or pivot? Right? So I literally, my second appointment with people, they're so overwhelmed by the treatment plan, but they're also so grateful. Right. I'm like, I'm not expecting you to do all this at once, that's why we see each other for the next six to eight weeks.
Sydney Malawer: Every week so that we can help you move the needle. Right.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, which I love. I remember the first time you told me about your treatment plans. And I was like, wow. But as somebody who loves a good guide, you know, I mean, that's me. I need to step up my game. That's, that's amazing. Well, because here's the thing.
Julie Michelson: You're [Page//00:31:00] giving people the understanding of what really. the healing path is.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah, and understanding because another realm of, well, two other realms of East Asian medicine, there's diet, right? Um, and particularly nutrition and that's When you overeat stuff and undereat stuff, um, and then there's the lifestyle aspect, right?
Sydney Malawer: So, like, mitigating overwork, mitigating stress response, right? Navigating stress, because I never say managing stress, because you cannot manage stress. The only thing you can do is navigate through it, and like, You know, and having the
Julie Michelson: tools to do that in a healthy
Sydney Malawer: way.
Julie Michelson: Yeah,
Sydney Malawer: exactly. There's a lot of at home treatments, right?
Sydney Malawer: There's, um, like when we deal with thyroid conditions, I'll always have them wash their neck because it's shown to, um, decrease antibodies in both Hashimoto's and graves, right? Like it's just shown. Okay. Now tell me more. So, [Page//00:32:00] uh, Korea has done a lot of really great research in this. Um, so, and then I have also seen it in my patients.
Sydney Malawer: Right? I actually just had a patient, so I have a patient who, um, she, she has Hashimoto's. She has thyroglobulin antibodies though, not TPO antibodies. Okay. So she went undiagnosed forever because they didn't test her thyroglobulin antibodies. That's a whole other conversation and I know there's been a lot about Hashis.
Sydney Malawer: But she was doing neck Gua Sha. Her thyroglobulin antibodies went from 67 to 16 in a matter of three months. Wow. She stopped Gua Sha ing. And nine months later it was up at, um, it was like her antibodies were up at 35. And what is gua shaing? Gua sha, so you take effectively a soup spoon, like one of those porcelain soup spoons.
Sydney Malawer: That's what I give people. This is like, this is your gift. And then you just scrape your, your neck, both the [Page//00:33:00] front and the back of your neck. And so what it's effectively doing, it's, yeah, it's allowing for blood flow and so it's allowing to it's like letting loose lymphocytes that are living in the tissue so that the lymphatic system can then take, it's not lymphatic massage at all, lymphatic is completely different.
Sydney Malawer: But, um, it's effectively loosening them so the lymphatic system can get rid of them.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Okay. Just like, I'm just sitting here now. It's very rare for me to be speechless. And I'm like, my mouth is hanging open for anybody listening on audio that can't see the expression on my face. Yeah.
Sydney Malawer: And it's hard because, um, so my, my thyroid mentor is a woman named Heidi Levy at New York.
Sydney Malawer: She's awesome. And she talked about someone sent her this article, um, this, this, um, scientific research article out of Korea about the, the Gua Sha for antibodies. And she threw it away. Cause she was like, this is bullshit. Oh, sorry. This is bull. Right. Say it. I don't know if we can Jersey. Okay. Good. Yeah. Um, so like, [Page//00:34:00] like this is BS.
Sydney Malawer: Like, she just threw it seems
Julie Michelson: so hard to believe. Which is why my mouth is hanging
Sydney Malawer: open. She's like, absolutely not. She's a very, very logical person. She's like, absolutely not. I'm out. She has Hashimoto's. But it, like, kind of stuck in her mind. She's like, I'm going to test it out on myself. So she took her blood.
Sydney Malawer: blood tests, found out what her antibodies were, did Gua Sha for a month, retook them. Without changing anything else, I'm guessing. Without changing anything else. Um, and then retook her, her labs and they had, and she was like, okay, maybe there's something to this. And then she kept looking for the research article and she can't find it.
Sydney Malawer: So she literally has a bounty out. So if anyone can find this article. Because it exists. Because it exists, she just, it was like through an email and then she like, you know, put it in her spam box Crazy, crazy bin.
Julie Michelson: In the
Sydney Malawer: crazy bin. Yeah. Um, so. But there are other articles coming out of Korea that show an, in, for [Page//00:35:00] Hashimoto specifically, doing Net Gua Sha will, um, decrease TSH and increase, increase free T4.
Julie Michelson: Wow, that's incredible. And I want to highlight another little piece of that story. Um, which is regarding like your patient with that you started with. Um, somebody just asked me the other day, you know, well, do you say you're in remission? Do you say you don't have rheumatoid arthritis anymore? And I was like, it's all semantics.
Julie Michelson: Like, it's not something I actually think about anymore. It's not a part of my life. However, I am a million percent certain that if I went back to living the way I was living that got me sick in the first place, I would be clinically diagnosable with rheumatoid arthritis again in the future. Like, there's no question.
Julie Michelson: Um, and that example just reminded me of, um, The, my, my sweetheart is a much [Page//00:36:00] gentler, kinder human than I am. And, and so when somebody, you know, has been on plan and it's working and you know, it's like, yay, and then they'd come back in that scenario of like, they're now they're not on plan and they're, and you can see on labs, it's not working.
Julie Michelson: Um, he's really great at just highlighting like, well, what you were doing was clearly working. And when you don't do it. It's not working. Yeah. So, there you
Sydney Malawer: go. That's the beauty of labs. Like, I run, I run labs on everyone because I need that baseline and I need to see, I need them to see progress because I'll see it in
Julie Michelson: the course.
Julie Michelson: My whole thing is how do you feel? But also, I'm a geek, and I love seeing antibodies correct. I love seeing inflammation markers go down, fill in the blank. The particular patient I was thinking about, you know, was somebody with prostate cancer. I wanted to see his PSA continuing to go back down instead of starting to trend upward again, you know.[Page//00:37:00]
Julie Michelson: Um, and so there is this reward of, you know, being able to track and, and see like, oh, yeah. And, you know, if I don't work it, it doesn't work. It
Sydney Malawer: also, um, self reporting is really hard. Because you're with yourself 24 7. Yep. I had someone come in yesterday who, um, so he has psoriasis. He came in originally with nail psoriasis, but then he got a really, like, uh, effectively strep throat.
Sydney Malawer: And for psoriatic, strep throat is like one day. You have one day of a burning sore throat, and then because your, your body is, um, like, Th1 cytokine dominant, it just, like, knocks it out. But then, six to eight weeks later, you have a psoriatic, uh, psoriasis flare. And so that's what happened to him, is he had this sore throat, he was doing really well, his nail psoriasis was almost completely grown out, and then he, um, like, he came in, uh, in November with, like, actual, like, Now psoriatic lesions.
Sydney Malawer: His, um, he had [Page//00:38:00] scalp lesions that had like come down on his forehead. He had body lesions that he never had before and he was freaking out. And he kept saying, I've never had this before, I've never had this before, I've never had this before. I keep going deep down there. I was like, actually I've had this before.
Sydney Malawer: When I was A teenager when I was 20 or when I was, and I was like, okay, so you just, like, and for him, it's, if it's on his torso and he can cover it, he didn't really pay attention to it. It's when it's in visible areas that it starts freaking him out. But we were able to get him on track. He was, he went, his body lesions went away in about eight weeks, which is actually pretty fast for psoriasis.
Sydney Malawer: Um, but he's, his nails got a little bit worse and his, his scalp is actually significantly better. I'm pretty impressed with his scalp. His nails got a little bit worse. So I saw him. yesterday and he's like freaking out about his nails and I'm looking at his scalp and his scalp is clear. It's the clearest I've seen it ever.
Sydney Malawer: Um, and his nails are the way they are because he was gardening and they [Page//00:39:00] were, um, responsive to the Kubner phenomenon, right? Which is when you, uh, in sites of trauma, you'll get psoriasis. So because he had been working with his hands, his nails got worse, but they, he had told me like, they were almost all like, they were like, he's like, Oh, they were kind of almost clear.
Sydney Malawer: And then I did this, like, what's wrong, what's not working? I'm like, no, no, no, it just means, from a Chinese medical perspective, that you have toxic heat in the blood level that we just need to Then work on right? Like it's it's information,
Julie Michelson: right?
Sydney Malawer: Um, and I love that. I
Julie Michelson: think it's part of one of my I always tell clients, you know, one of my biggest roles as a coach is making you look over your shoulder to realize the progress you've made because we don't I love that you brought up the self reporting or like last week.
Julie Michelson: Um, a client was in clinic in person with her husband. They both had lab reviews and she's a Long, complicated case. Fabulous, [Page//00:40:00] fabulous lady. And after, you know, she gave her thing, I turned to him and I was like, and what have you noticed? Right. Because we do discounts. All the time, you know, what's going on in our body or like you said, if, if we don't think other people can see it or we're pushing through it, we just, we're, we're not acknowledging, we're not aware.
Julie Michelson: But
Sydney Malawer: it's funny because I talked to this, this person and I, because he had eliminated all of the super inflammatory foods and he had snuck all of them back in and that, so his nails were completely clear. And then he's like, Oh, something's wrong. Like, this isn't working on me. I'm broken or something. I know, but I'm like, no, you reintroduce these foods.
Sydney Malawer: Cause, effect. Yeah, and, and I don't, like, I'm at the, with him, I've, I've mentioned going back on Otezlet to him because of the, it's really hard for him to Because if you can't do
Julie Michelson: the, yeah. I told him that that's an option. I had a client yesterday saying she was feeling sad because, she's like, I just [Page//00:41:00] don't think I can eat bread anymore.
Julie Michelson: And I'm like, what kind of bread? Last I had spoken to her, she was gluten free. I had a whole wheat bread sandwich the other day and man, my gut was a wreck. And I was like, you can't
Sydney Malawer: connect your own dots now. I know. And it's hard. It's hard because I get it. He wants to live the way he wants to live. And he's had psoriasis since he was a kid.
Sydney Malawer: He's had scalp psoriasis since he was a kid. And so, um, I just, I, I, that's where like Western medicine does work because it does suppress. symptoms if you want to keep living the lifestyle you want to live and I, you know, I approached that with him and I was like, listen, like you're doing pretty well now even with some integration.
Sydney Malawer: You have a little bit of nail psoriasis. That's from the Kupner. Let's focus on herbal medicine for you and then he gets consistent, um, cause he lives pretty far away. So he comes to see me once every six to eight weeks and then he gets community acupuncture cause he, he lives about an hour and a half away, um, closer to him so that it's more [Page//00:42:00] accessible.
Sydney Malawer: That's pretty cool. Um, because one of the things about psoriatics is we have a personality type where the way I describe it is we turn our, um, hobbies into obligations. And so we tend to be hyper, hyper stressed out people and acupuncture minimally, even if it's needles in the wrong place, will calm down the nervous system and allow for psoriatics to like, not get so overwhelmed.
Julie Michelson: Interesting. I, I think, um, but that's interesting to hear you say that about psoriatics specifically. Um, somebody had asked me once, you know, do you work with, do you see a fair amount of, um, control freaks or, and I'm like, every client, I mean, it may look different on the outside, but yeah, every client.
Julie Michelson: Perfectionism is like, and it took me, I can't tell you how many years to then look in the mirror. And be like, hmm, [Page//00:43:00] er, if I should look at myself, um, and, and so, you know, and these are things that serve us until they don't, I don't know.
Sydney Malawer: Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. And so that's the thing is like, I think one of the reasons why I gravitate towards autoimmunity and dermatology, um, is one, because it's, uh, very much, there aren't very many options in Western medicine.
Sydney Malawer: Right. There's aren't. Um, I get a lot of people who are at their wits end. I get a lot of people who are like, I'm coming to you out of sheer desperation. I literally had a patient who would faint with needles, including blood draws, and she had, she had really bad eczema and she came to me, she's like, I don't know what else to do.
Sydney Malawer: So I'm willing to risk fainting to figure this out. And. Yeah. Yeah. He never fainted on my table, thank God. Uh, she fainted in other acupuncture clinics, but like, um, because I referred her to a, a community clinic when it, so now we have a community room within my clinic. But before when we didn't, I would [Page//00:44:00] refer her to this like one practitioner in a community clinic nearby who I knew and I studied with, and I like gave her the baby needles.
Sydney Malawer: I was like, use only these needles on this particular patient. Um, and she still passed out once. But, um, but she's better. Worth it to her to get better. Yeah. She is, she made a great recovery. It took her a while because she was a teacher and she kept getting sick. And with eczema, you are TH1 cytokine deficient.
Sydney Malawer: So you actually catch colds really easily and then it triggers your eczema. So it kept being like this like back and forth. Cycle. Yeah. Yeah, but she eventually, her immunity got better. Her, her eczema is significantly better. Um, she was dependent on steroid creams for 20 years and now she uses it once every four months.
Sydney Malawer: When she has like a tiny bit on her heel and she wants to wear sandals. Um, she just went through like a whole pregnancy and had a really smooth birth. And, um, I haven't actually talked to her in a couple of weeks because she's in, you know, complete postpartum mama [Page//00:45:00] mode. But, um, she, you know, she was like pretty stable throughout her pregnancy.
Sydney Malawer: It, it flared, her eczema flared like twice. Um, and we couldn't use herbal medicine. We just, um, Because with pregnancy you can't really do, I mean you can, I just don't know how to, right. Um, so I usually refer out. It's not wor Yeah.
Julie Michelson: That, that's not, yeah. And I can feel the like, this is why you do what you do.
Julie Michelson: Right. Hundred percent. I love it. I love it. So here is some people's least favorite part of the podcast. My favorite part, I think it's listener's favorite part too. . What is, it could be anything, one step that listeners can take today to start to support their health.
Sydney Malawer: A really good question.
Julie Michelson: I know, it's a tricky one. It's tough.
Sydney Malawer: I think [Page//00:46:00] the first step is, uh, is assessing what they're doing and, like, making a list of, like, good, bad, missing. So things they know that are good for them, things they know that are bad for them and things that they might be missing from their life. I love
Julie Michelson: that. I love it. Yeah. I love how you got, you got, you got like lots of things in that one step too.
Julie Michelson: I knew you were going to, but like masterfully, you did it legally. I love it. That's great. Because you know, we all, We have more knowledge and intuition than we realize, and so I love that, just assessing.
Sydney Malawer: I tell people this all the time. Um, you know more about your condition than any of your practitioners.
Julie Michelson: Yep.
Sydney Malawer: So, and what I hate is when my, my patients aren't taken seriously. Not just by Western, by any other practitioner. Right. Yeah. Right. I literally, I had somebody come in who was [Page//00:47:00] so dismissed by his last acupuncturist, Very good. Um, who pretty much said his insomnia was because Uh, he, quote unquote, ate like Gwyneth Paltrow, and I was like, that is so mean, like, no, that doesn't, that's not the only thing, like, look at his whole, like, he was a therapist, and so he, you know, was taking on a lot of people's energies, and like, um, he wasn't processing them well.
Sydney Malawer: Right. Right? So I'm like, there's so much more to it than just like, you are a vegetarian and don't eat enough. There's never one. It's never one thing. Never one thing. Yeah. And it's
Julie Michelson: never one thing that solves it either. No. Cause we're complex. Whole humans. Exactly. And so, yeah. Uh, I love that. And I love that you're, you're, it was about a man because so often we talk about, because it is so common, especially in the autoimmune world of women being belittled and women not being heard, and women getting offered antidepressants [Page//00:48:00] because their doctors don't know how to help them or don't understand what's going on with them.
Julie Michelson: Mm-Hmm. . Um, and it's, it's happening. Happens to spend too. So
Sydney Malawer: No, it does, it happens to, um. A lot, like, a lot of different people are dismissed and it sucks because Western medicine is a do we intervene or do we not game. There's no prevention. There's no, except for functional, like, there's no real prevention.
Sydney Malawer: There's no, I've literally had people, I had, I have this one patient, he's so lovely, um, and it's also he, he's trans, um, so it's even more marginalized than women in healthcare. Sure. Yeah. But he has so many different markers for different autoimmune conditions, but none of them lead up to a diagnosis. And none of them are high enough for them to intervene.
Sydney Malawer: So they literally just say, you have to live in pain. There's nothing we can do for you.
Julie Michelson: Well, but the beautiful thing is instead of him getting stuck in that system like I did for over a decade, taking all [Page//00:49:00] of the medications, he had to keep searching and found you.
Sydney Malawer: He did. And honestly, he made, he was having asthma and he got an inhaler and it wasn't working.
Sydney Malawer: And when you look at the rest of him, he has some sort of, he has some sort of connective tissue disease. We don't know what it is. It's not MCTD. It's not. So here's,
Julie Michelson: here's a question though. Do you need to know what it is in order to help him heal?
Sydney Malawer: No, but here's the thing. I thought of that. I'm like, he has these.
Sydney Malawer: issues with his muscles and his joints. What if the breathing is intercostal muscles? And so we did, um, acupuncture and herbal medicine for the intercostals and his breathing got 98 percent better. But, and so I, to the point where he like had me write a letter to his pulmonologist to be like, this is what we saw.
Sydney Malawer: This is what you missed. Yeah. Well, this is what we saw. He obviously has these other connective tissue issues. The intercostal muscles, are a huge part of [Page//00:50:00] that, so like you have to look at the whole person, not just the one symptom.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, and that is the, this, this jointed western approach, right? That's, that's why for what I'll call lifestyle illnesses, if you will, even with genetic components, still always lifestyle, um, just, that's not, that's not acute care and that's not what western medicine does as well.
Julie Michelson: Period. Yeah. Oh, well, I've kept you so, so long before I let you go. For people that are listening on the go, as I tend to when I'm listening to podcasts, where's the best place to find you?
Sydney Malawer: So my clinic website is tendervine health. Um, I have a personal website too But it's I don't really update it and it's mostly for other practitioners.
Sydney Malawer: But yeah, so it's tendervine t e n d e r v i n e health so if you google us we're there and We're [Page//00:51:00] based out of Berkeley, California. So we don't we don't Really do remote. Um, but if you wanna like pay attention, 'cause we try and write bog articles as much as possible because it's, it's not just me, it's a team.
Sydney Malawer: We're, we're a team of practitioners now. So. Yeah.
Julie Michelson: And amazing, amazing information you're putting out there, . Thank you. So thank you so very much. I appreciate all of the wisdom you shared with us today.
Sydney Malawer: No problem. Thanks Julie for having me.
Julie Michelson: For everyone listening, remember you can get the transcripts and show notes by visiting inspired living. show.
Julie Michelson: I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I'll see you next week.
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Sydney Malawer
Dr. Sydney Malawer, DAIM L.Ac. runs Tendervine Health, an acupuncture and integrative East-Asian medicine practice in Berkeley, CA that specializes in the treatment of complex conditions, in particular autoimmunity and dermatology.
She came to East-Asian medicine through her own struggle with psoriasis and seeks to bring the same comfort, relief, and advocacy to her patients that she has received throughout her struggle.
Dr. Sydney’s training is focused in Traditional Japanese Acupuncture and Moxibustion, classical herbalism, and clinical integrative East-Asian medicine. She is a member of the International TCM Dermatology Association founded by Dr. Mazin Al-Khafaji, the go-to expert for herbal medicine approaches to dermatological, allergic, and autoimmune diseases. In addition to East-Asian medicine, Dr. Sydney is currently training in functional medicine approaches to complex autoimmune conditions through Dr. Aviva Romm's Functional & Integrative Medicine Professional Training P
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